Google, Big Data & What it Means for SEO

In Google’s recent earnings call, the question was posed, “If you think of the future of Internet search 3 or 4 years out, how important will the social signal be and how important (will) personalization be?” CEO Larry Page responded by explaining how he might search for one of his friends who had a common name. “For the first time, the search box isn’t really searching a string...it’s actually searching for that person that I know,” Page said. “Having real feedback from users...is very useful for search...we have a lot of those signals already, but we can always use more...we can always use better relevance and we can always use more data to generate that.” Page’s response reveals two insights into how Google is thinking about big data: Page’s anecdote is a direct reference to Google’s increasing focus on enhancing the search experience by leveraging semantic content. It ...